[Excerpted from the Air Force Academy Falcon Footnote]

USAFA attempted to persuade me not to declare myself a history major immediately after my first semester.  But I couldn’t be reasoned with.  Considering I graduated as 2008’s #1 US History major, I think I’m safe in saying that I was right.  

Today, I am the CEO of a niche insurance company that is the largest insurer of bowling centers in the nation.  I started my first business at the age of 9 selling pistachios grown on my grandmother’s farm and by the time I was an Academy sophomore, I was selling thousands of pounds every year in multiple flavors.  I counted many professors as my clients—until USAFA put me out of business that is.  Someone thought it might be a conflict of interest for a cadet to be selling an addictive form of pyrene (the scientific name for a nut).  Between then and now, there were several other businesses I either started or was an owner because in my heart, I was an entrepreneur.  

So why didn’t I major in management or something more “business-like?”  The answer is part practical and part principle.  

You see, I’m a history nerd.  Unapologetic, unafraid, and so intense was my nerdery that I competed for 7 consecutive years (from 6^th grade to senior year of high school) in National History Day in both individual and group performance categories.  I’ve researched and impersonated Joseph P. Kennedy, Al Capone, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and George Eastman (of Kodak fame) among others.  Did you know Theodore Roosevelt, the absolute eternal epitome of all that is wonderful and good about masculinity, had a high-pitched, often falsetto speaking voice?  I did, because I had to mimic it for a tour group on the porch of his home in Oyster Bay, NY when I was a high school freshman, wearing a fake mustache, pince-nez glasses, and a fat suit.  You see?  I’m such a history nerd that I boast about it!  I have no shame.  

Kidding aside, on a practical level I knew that the best way to secure my first-choice base assignment and career field would be to earn the best grades I could.  I wanted the closest thing the Air Force could offer to business upon graduation and declaring history made that path as easy as it was ever going to get.  And it worked.  I was commissioned an acquisitions officer headed to Hanscom, Air Force Base in Massachusetts.  If you ask why a California born and bred young man chose Massachusetts, I’m sure you can guess the answer…had something to do with the 18^th century…It wasn’t all cold logic though. I had great fun in all my majors courses and learned a lot from an abundance of amazing military and civilian instructors.  

In 2014, after learning the obvious (that the Air Force knows very little about business) but still gaining tremendously valuable experience, I decided to exit the Air Force and go into the family business, eventually quadrupling its size and earning the right to buy the business from my father.

But still, why did I immediately declare history?  Because on principle I knew that further study and discipline in history would do far more than any business degree to prepare me for life as an entrepreneur.  How? 

History is not the study of events, dates, or technology.  It involves all of those things, but ultimately, history is the study of people.  It’s not a stove-piped study of humans like psychology, but the intensive analysis of people’s interactions, motivations, and how events influence their actions.  You can learn what makes people create, what inspires, angers, wounds, and influences them to act.  Can one understand the historical importance of the iPhone without understanding Steve Jobs and the history of Apple?  Of course not.  Without his failures and his forced ousting from Apple, Steve Jobs never would have been so unreasonably determined to forge the future of technology in his own image.  History gives you the ability to learn from others’ mistakes without having to experience the same pains.  History gives you insight into the future because while history may not exactly repeat itself, it absolutely rhymes!  Men like Cornelius Vanderbilt, John. D. Rockefeller Sr., J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie (bleh! Not a fan!) can teach an entrepreneur valuable lessons about opportunity, growth, and competition.  Leaders like Teddy Roosevelt, George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Lawrence of Arabia can teach an entrepreneur about leadership, coalition building, the value of symbols, and the inspiring nature of grit and endurance.  Innovators like Thomas Edison, Guglielmo Marconi, and George Eastman can teach an entrepreneur how stubborn determination, creativity, and disciplined, yet random experimentation can change the world.  And I can’t help but notice that so many of history’s greats possessed a photographic memory (Alexander Hamilton, Teddy Roosevelt, and Napoleon Bonaparte among them)!

Apart from the lessons I’ve learned from my own family and experiences, history has been a wellspring of knowledge for me to tap in my quest to become the kingpin of bowling center insurance.  I aim to conquer new territories like Napoleon, ruthlessly grind out competitors like Rockefeller (with more sense of fair play of course), and build an incredible team of compatriots like Washington.  

Oh, I’m not as good as any of these men, but that’s the other beauty of studying history: it gives us heroes even when our own generation does not.  History offers heroes who can inspire our own future.  History gives us a roadmap to engineer a better present.  And to roughly paraphrase the biblical sage and Jewish King Solomon: since there is nothing new under the sun, we ought to seek the old paths to find wisdom and her fruits.